Generating sources by running a project's java class in Maven

Question

I'm converting a largish Ant build to Maven. As part of the Ant build, we have several steps which created Java classes by invoking one of the project's classes, simplified as:

javac SomeGenerator.java
java  SomeGenerator  generated # generate classes in generated/
javac generated/*.java

I've split each generator in its own Maven module, but I have the problem of not being able to run the generator since it's not yet compiled in the generate-sources phase.

I've tried something similar to

        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
            <artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>1.1.1</version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <id>generate-model</id>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>java</goal>
                    </goals>
                    <phase>generate-sources</phase>

                    <configuration>
                        <mainClass>DTOGenerator</mainClass>
                        <arguments>
                            <argument>${model.generated.dir}</argument>
                        </arguments>
                    </configuration>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>

Which sadly does not work, for the reasons outlined above. Splitting the code generators into two projects each, one for compiling the generator and another for generating the DTOs seems overkill.

What alternatives are there?

---

Using Maven 2.2.1.

Answer 1

I didn't want to have 2 different projects, so I tried to setup Maven for adding the generated compiled code to the final jar package.

This is the working solution I've used:

• In process-classes phase (executed just after the compile phase):
  • exec-maven-plugin for executing a main class able to generate my source files in target/generated-sources/java folder (in my specific case I used the Roaster library for source code generation);
  • build-helper-maven-plugin for adding the generated sources in the correct location
• In prepare-package phase:
  • maven-compiler-plugin, in order to detect the changes and recompile the module
  • maven-jar-plugin for producing the jar package

This is my pom.xml:

<build>
    <plugins>

        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
            <artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>1.6.0</version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <phase>process-classes</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>java</goal>
                    </goals>
                    <configuration>
                        <mainClass>com.example.MyClassWriter</mainClass>
                        <arguments>
                            <argument>${project.basedir}</argument>
                            <argument>${project.build.directory}</argument>
                        </arguments>
                    </configuration>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>

        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
            <artifactId>build-helper-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>3.0.0</version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <phase>process-classes</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>add-source</goal>
                    </goals>
                    <configuration>
                        <sources>
                            <source>${project.build.directory}/generated-sources/java</source>
                        </sources>
                    </configuration>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>

        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>3.6.1</version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <phase>prepare-package</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>compile</goal>
                    </goals>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>

        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>3.0.2</version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <phase>prepare-package</phase>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>

    </plugins>
</build>